Income and Wealth Disparity

Created by: www.ForensicAccounting.net

Kiss - the Nation, the Band, the Corporation

It was early in the 19th century that Webster convinced the Supreme Court that the corporation outlasted any one person.

Now, Gene Simmons and band mate Paul Stanley are preparing fans for the notion of the band Kiss outlasting all four founding members. What wasn't possible with the Beatles or the Rolling Stones may well be possible with the band that had the forethought to hide between masks at every concert.

When they sang, "and party every day" I just thought they were talking about days of the week. I had no idea they were planning immortality.

Hate Congress / Love Your Congressperson

Americans hate Congress (approval ratings hit 11% this summer but have now risen to 17%) but love their congressperson. The average margin of victory for congressional elections is 33%, which works out to about a 2 to 1 drubbing.

It could be that we Americans are schizophrenic or it could be that we still haven't figured out the difference between choosing great parts and creating a great system. Which makes us little different from the representatives we elect.

People love to rant about how awful are members of congress but the fact that when they have a chance they vote them in by a 2 to 1 margin confirms to me that our representatives are generally bright, personable, and community-minded. More so than the rest of us.

In the future, when systems thinking is as common as pragmatic thinking is today, they'll look at things like this, financial crises, and climate change and ask, "Did they actually need more clues to suggest to them that they needed a better appreciation of systems? What were they thinking?"

And then some sage person will remind the kids, "It wasn't what they were thinking. It was how they were thinking."

Fail fast because life is short and you don't want it to be one prolonged, slow-motion train wreck

Fail fast because life is short and you don't want it to be one prolonged, slow-motion train wreck.

It seems to me that one big problem in life is that successful communities depend on improbable actions. How many athletes tried for a gold medal in each event? Dozens showed up in London but before that there were hundreds at national qualifying rounds and before those, thousands or millions who aspired to greatness in regional meets. We don't get our heroes without first inducing thousands of "losers" to participate.

The same is true of scientific advances, business start ups, careers in acting, art, writing, comedy, and politics. A community that advances by running faster, making things cheaper, creating new products we suddenly can't live without, art that moves us, dance steps that make us all get out of our seats, or stand up that makes us laugh hysterically gets there on a road strewn with failure.

It seems that the communities that do this best don't just reward the winners (it's important for aspiring novelists to know what kinds of books critics and book readers want). They also encourage the losers (lots of great breakthroughs come from people who lost the first time, and the second time, and the third ...), take some of the risk out of losing (given the high probability of losing, we want the simple act of participating to have its own rewards, whether it be the great physical condition of competing in sports or the incredible learning that comes from trying to start a business), and give people room for reinvention after their losses.

The more that failure is treated as feedback rather than affirmation of our worst fears, the more it can be used to guide us. The world we live in is changing, we're changing, and our understanding of both is wildly incomplete. And we've never needed more experimentation than now, more desperately needed people to go off script.

After all these obvious claims comes the big question. How does a community encourage people to take improbable risks? I'd argue that it comes at least as much from making loss palatable as it does from making victory that much sweeter.

What Really Matters to Our Economy (and it isn't a few points on the marginal tax rate)

It seems to highlight the poverty of the economic debate in this country that the most frequent and passionate argument about how to "fix" the economy revolves around the question of whether the marginal tax rate on income over $250,000 should be raised by 3%.

If the tax rate raises that slightly on that little income, it will not eliminate or even seriously reduce the deficit. Nor will it discourage the rich from being rich. It doesn't matter which way the coin flips on this issue, the economy will be little changed.

I don't often do a plug for my book The Fourth Economy here, but perhaps I should. If I'm right that we're moving from an information to entrepreneurial economy, there are a host of policies (many of them corporate policies and not policies that would emanate from congress or state capitals) that would make a huge difference in the level of GDP growth, per capita income growth, and job growth. This marginal tax rate? It might make some difference in deficit levels but it'll make little difference either way on these other, more important measures.

It's time to talk about real issues, not symbolic ones. What are we doing to help more citizens and employees to be more entrepreneurial? There is no other question that would have more impact on the economic measures that matter.

Mitt Kibitzs on Kibbutzs

"It's individuals and their entrepreneurship which have driven America," Romney said. "What America is not a collective where we all work in a Kibbutz or we all in some little entity, instead it's individuals pursuing their dreams and building successful enterprises which employ others and they become inspired as they see what has happened in the place they work and go off and start their own enterprises."
- Mitt Romney, after his recent return from Israel.

Note that in his description of successful enterprises, Romney describes individuals who employ others, not communities that jointly create. Romney's world is one of elites, people who can create and people who are lucky to work in those elites creation. No Kibbutz indeed.

Americans Doing Nearly as Well as North Koreans in 2012 Olympics: Per Capita Rankings

Americans are 3X as likely to have won a medal than the average world citizen, which makes them nearly as athletic as North Koreans. More precisely, Americans are 3.08 times more likely to have a medal, and North Koreans are 3.11 times more likely. As of yesterday, the 25 million North Koreans share 5 medals, and the 314 million Americans share 63.

After Kirani James won his gold medal yesterday in the 400 meter, Grenada is at the top of the list for per capita medal count, with one medal for each of its 105,000 citizens.

Unsurprisingly, India is at the bottom of the list (of countries that have won medals), with one medal for every 403k citizens. While China dominates and may well finish with the most medals, its per capita medal count is below average, putting it between Iran and Ethiopia.

Host Great Britain is, rather fittingly, doing the best of all the big countries. Its citizens are 10X more likely than average to have won a medal.

Jamaica has the world's fastest human beings and seems to dominate Olympic news coverage, but actually finishes fourth place in per capita medal count, behind Grenada, Slovenia, and New Zealand, and just ahead of Denmark.

Here's the table with the per capita medal count ranking through 6 August.

Rank	Country	Medals	Population	Pop. / Medal	Compared to Avg.
1	Grenada	1	105,000	105,000	146.21
2	Slovenia	4	2,057,910	514,478	29.84
3	New Zealand	8	4,434,400	554,300	27.70
4	Jamaica	4	2,705,827	676,457	22.69
5	Denmark	8	5,584,758	698,095	21.99
6	Cyprus	1	838,897	838,897	18.30
7	Australia	22	22,692,531	1,031,479	14.88
8	Belarus	8	9,457,500	1,182,188	12.99
9	Hungary	8	9,962,000	1,245,250	12.33
10	Estonia	1	1,294,236	1,294,236	11.86
11	Trinidad and Tobago	1	1,317,714	1,317,714	11.65
12	Slovakia	4	5,445,324	1,361,331	11.28
13	Mongolia	2	2,844,000	1,422,000	10.80
14	Croatia	3	4,290,612	1,430,204	10.73
15	Great Britain	43	62,262,000	1,447,953	10.60
16	Netherlands	11	16,738,836	1,521,712	10.09
17	Sweden	6	9,495,113	1,582,519	9.70
18	Lithuania	2	3,187,700	1,593,850	9.63
19	Cuba	7	11,247,925	1,606,846	9.55
20	Armenia	2	3,268,500	1,634,250	9.39
21	Qatar	1	1,699,435	1,699,435	9.03
22	Moldova	2	3,559,500	1,779,750	8.63
23	Czech Republic	5	10,504,203	2,100,841	7.31
24	Korea	22	48,580,000	2,208,182	6.95
25	Georgia	2	4,497,600	2,248,800	6.83
26	Romania	8	19,042,936	2,380,367	6.45
27	Kazakhstan	7	16,776,000	2,396,571	6.41
28	France	27	65,350,000	2,420,370	6.34
29	Norway	2	5,027,800	2,513,900	6.11
30	Singapore	2	5,183,700	2,591,850	5.92
31	Azerbaijan	3	9,235,100	3,078,367	4.99
32	Russia	42	143,117,000	3,407,548	4.51
33	Canada	10	34,880,400	3,488,040	4.40
34	Germany	23	81,859,000	3,559,087	4.31
35	Serbia	2	7,120,666	3,560,333	4.31
36	Italy	17	60,820,787	3,577,693	4.29
37	Belgium	3	10,951,266	3,650,422	4.21
38	Puerto Rico	1	3,725,789	3,725,789	4.12
39	Switzerland	2	7,952,600	3,976,300	3.86
40	Japan	28	127,530,000	4,554,643	3.37
41	Dominican Republic	2	9,445,281	4,722,641	3.25
42	Poland	8	38,501,000	4,812,625	3.19
43	DPR Korea	5	24,554,000	4,910,800	3.13
44	US	63	314,059,000	4,985,063	3.08
45	Ukraine	9	45,565,909	5,062,879	3.03
46	Tunisia	2	10,673,800	5,336,900	2.88
47	Greece	2	10,787,690	5,393,845	2.85
48	Finland	1	5,413,830	5,413,830	2.84
49	Hong Kong, China	1	7,103,700	7,103,700	2.16
50	Kenya	5	42,749,000	8,549,800	1.80
51	Spain	5	46,163,116	9,232,623	1.66
52	Colombia	4	46,638,000	11,659,500	1.32
53	South Africa	4	50,586,757	12,646,689	1.21
54	Guatemala	1	14,713,763	14,713,763	1.04
-	total	458	7,031,000,000	15,351,528	1.00
55	Iran	4	75,149,669	18,787,417	0.82
56	China	65	1,347,350,000	20,728,462	0.74
57	Ethiopia	4	84,320,987	21,080,247	0.73
58	Mexico	5	112,336,538	22,467,308	0.68
59	Chinese Taipei	1	23,261,747	23,261,747	0.66
60	Brazil	8	192,376,496	24,047,062	0.64
61	Saudi Arabia	1	27,136,977	27,136,977	0.57
62	Venezuela	1	27,150,095	27,150,095	0.57
63	Malaysia	1	28,334,135	28,334,135	0.54
64	Uzbekistan	1	29,123,400	29,123,400	0.53
65	Argentina	1	40,117,096	40,117,096	0.38
66	Egypt	2	82,473,000	41,236,500	0.37
67	Thailand	1	65,479,453	65,479,453	0.23
68	Turkey	1	74,724,269	74,724,269	0.21
69	Indonesia	2	237,641,326	118,820,663	0.13
70	India	3	1,210,193,422	403,397,807	0.04